


he, if it is permissible, seems to surpass the gods

by ninhursag



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Awkward First Times, Dream Logic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Timeline What Timeline, sex and feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Ronan dreams Adam before he has him, and dream Adam is different, an echo only. Bare and on his knees. The thin up curve of his mouth, jut of wrist bone and rib, dip of his spine, sweat soaked and sun browned.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 8
Kudos: 130





	he, if it is permissible, seems to surpass the gods

**Author's Note:**

> Just some comfort fic with some bonus sex and feelings.

Ronan dreams Adam before he has him, and dream Adam is different, an echo only. Bare and on his knees. The thin up curve of his mouth, jut of wrist bone and rib, dip of his spine, sweat soaked and sun browned. 

Dream Adam smiles and licks his lips, ripe and ready, like some filthy untranslated fragment of Catallus, something Latin and sharp, ancient words about dick and balls and fucking. There's a fallen leaf in his hair, maple red.

Ronan wakes up from having him with his dick wet and soft, spent on his belly. Ronan wakes up with a maple leaf crumbled in his hand and a strand of earth colored wrapped around it like he'd pulled it free.

He can't decide if it's better than nightmares. Ronan wakes up without him.

Real Adam, animal stuff Adam, that’s a whole other creature.

The real Adam is awkward and narrow eyed, watching from under pale lashes. He hesitates when he kisses, like he's learning a new language and his hands are too gentle on Ronan's skin. Uncertainty driving him, not kindness, like it is most important that, of all things, he leaves no trace of his hands on another body.

He stinks of engine oil and cheap soap. He wears an old t-shirt, worn soft and thin and translucent, keeping his scars out of Ronan's sight. But Ronan wants them, all these traces of him, for the scent of him to sink into skin and hair and sheets.

And Ronan wants the rest of it, the ribs and those scars, half glimpsed in the shower before they’re wrapped up in worn out towels, silvery on pale skin. Round marks, old circles of burns, erratic and scattered. Thin marks, left by an overeager switch. They are Adam's. Real Adam keeps them all close and free of any hungry grip, not for owning.

“I want to suck your dick,” Ronan tells him and Adam looks at him like he’s gotten caught watching porn in class. Unsmiling, pale eyes gone wide and startled. “You don’t have to let me, I’ve never done anything like this before.”

But Adam swallows, throat bobbing, and says, “yeah. Ok. You can.”

His hips are bony, skin rough and ragged. Ronan isn’t magically good at it either, it’s too much, he goes too fast, chokes and gags and Adam shakes, mutters and pushes and gasps. Ronan is nothing but stubborn and goes on anyway, he can figure out how to do this. 

He does, he’s too hungry not to and he can hear it in Adam’s body when he gets it right, angle of his mouth, his hands, the pace. It makes him smile around his mouthful and keep going.

**

He had not entirely expected to get real Adam. He knew when there were eyes on him, but he didn’t know why. 

Real Adam looks straight at him and right past him. "I’m not trying to be dramatic," he says, unsmiling, eyes steady on a fixed and distant point.

Ronan shrugs and cracks his knuckles. “Fuck you,” he says, “that’s my job.”

Adam's knuckles are white and he looks tired, as usual. "No, your job is to be dramatic without trying." And then he looks Ronan right on, finally, like he's making good on a dare and hates it but is going to grit his teeth on through. "I'm not going to lie to you."

"Good," Ronan says and tries to set his face into lines of patience. Adam does lie, is the thing, to himself and to Ronan and to the world.

Adam, set and cold and tired, eyes on a fixed point in the middle distance tells him, "All I want to say, is you don’t owe me this.” Then, quickly. “Don’t get offended.”

Ronan takes a deep breath, like someone once told him. It doesn’t help, but the whiteness of Adam’s mouth does. Steady on, boy. “I’m starting to get offended. What the fuck do you mean, Parrish?”

“Lynch. I just mean--”

“You are the stupidest smart kid I have ever had the distinct displeasure of wanting to fuck.” Which is a lie in only one part. 

Adam smiles at him then, and it makes him feel suddenly worthy. "I want to fuck you too."

**

Dream Adam glistens and smiles, hot and welcoming, with white teeth and soft hair, his body lubed up and ready. He climbs Ronan’s thighs and seats himself on his dick like it belongs to him, which is no lie at all.

**

Real Adam fucks up his Latin grammar when he talks about dick sucking, which is hilarious. Adam does not wither under the mocking and mutters about _fellator_ under his breath before he leans in and kisses Ronan directly on the mouth.

His lips are chapped and his mouth is cold from the ice water he was drinking because he wouldn’t let Ronan buy him anything.

“You don’t owe me this either,” Ronan tells him, because fair is fair.

“Fuck you,” Adam tells him. He is jerky instead of smooth, his hands shake and he is perfect under the dim and shitty overhead lights. “You don’t tell me what I owe.”

Ronan laughs at him because he can’t do anything else. Adam’s palms are too cold and dry when they slide down his pants and grip at him, too much friction to make it easy, but it doesn’t matter.

Ronan’s dick is wet enough, when Adam rubs his thumb over the slit, already eager enough to go. Adam’s hands shake and it doesn’t matter, none of it does. It doesn’t take long for him to come.

**  
Sometimes dream Adam is unmarked by any hand or mind that is not Ronan’s. 

**

The first time Ronan sees the scars on Adam’s body in the full light of the sun it is on Ronan’s own land, safely held and well defended. Adam watches him watching and neither of them flinch away. Ronan knew, has known, has seen with his own eyes what had caused them, and has some bare inkling how deep they go.

He also can guess how Adam will react if he looks too much where he shouldn’t. This part of Adam is elusive, hard and utterly vulnerable. The fact he is here at all, naked on a blanket, sun on his skin, is worth more than any dream.

**

Sometimes dream Adam has scars too, after that, an echo of the truth, but he smiles and beckons and invites Ronan’s guard and protection. 

After Adam leaves Virginia, Ronan dreams him smiling on an old red brick sidewalk, crossing over a green, green manicured lawn. It is a dream, so no one else is there, in the middle of a sprawling city.

There is only ever Adam.

**

In his second year at Harvard, Adam rents an off campus basement studio on Springfield Street in Inman Square where Ronan is allowed to come. His landlady is a Portuguese woman who has lived right here, without interruption, since her husband died in the second world war. There is a cement Madonna in the front yard, in easy view of the porch, barely faded by the weather. She is still blue cloaked and smiling benevolently at her household. The landlady smiles often too. 

Adam shovels snow from her walk, rakes her leaves and fixes her ancient boiler when it rattles, in exchange for ridiculous rent and smiles. She doesn’t lift her eyebrows when Ronan visits, even when they hold hands, just rambles off in an accent that would be at home in the Azores. In exchange Ronan brings her pastries from corner bakeries in Winter Hill and waits in line on a Sunday morning for outdoor brunch, next to milling crowds of shitty facial hair. 

Otherwise, Ronan doesn’t go out much while Adam is at home. He lays in Adam’s bed where he can stay awake and watch dust filter through the yellow-orange beams of streetlight that manage to slip inside the windows. Dreaming here is not permissible.

Outside, men carry babies in fancy looking contraptions and push jogging strollers and argue about engineering while agreeing on the merits of Tom Brady.

Here, far away from home, Adam fucks Ronan without hesitation on a mattress on the floor during study breaks. He walks down the street and does not look over his shoulders when he’s laughing, doesn’t hesitate to slide his fingers through Ronan’s and if anyone else notices that he’s done it, they don’t have anything to say. 

**

Dream Adam grows sharp claws and careful smiles and digs in hard enough to burn, just like the burn of the real one. They don’t look much different anymore.


End file.
